Alfred hadn’t planned to talk to Bruce that afternoon,
and he hadn’t considered how he would raise the delicate subject. But it
was impossible to ignore the opportunity before him as the WE helicopter
landed on the South Lawn and he saw Bruce getting out and heading for the
french doors on the terrace. He was home hours ahead of schedule, and
alone; it was simply too perfect an opening to ignore.

Alfred intercepted him on the way to the study.

“You’re home quite early, sir,” he began.

Bruce didn’t slow his pace, but he gave that abrupt
sideways nod as he said “Research and Development called,” which Alfred knew
meant to follow him to the cave.

“Breakthrough on the work they’re doing with robotics
and telecomm,” he said. “I just got back from looking it over. It’s all
related to Sub Diego, so I want to get a briefing from Arthur before I talk
to Lucius again or see anyone else from Wayne Tech.”

“It’s lucky that the CEO of Wayne Enterprises has a
direct line to the King of Atlantis, sir. I shudder to think what an
executive who wasn’t in the Justice League would do to stay informed of the
happenings underwater.”

Bruce ignored the sarcasm and stepped into the costume
vault.

“You can joke all you want, Alfred. Sub Diego is the
most important responsibility the Wayne Foundation has outside of Gotham.
Giving those people the means to sustain a decent standard of living, in and
of itself, is a worthy goal. And then there’s Arthur. He’s never come to
terms with being the one who found them or with the knowledge that Geist
used his DNA to engineer the mutation.”

Bruce came out in costume, although he hadn’t bothered
with the utility belt for a simple ‘phone call’ to Atlantis. Alfred
waited. He listened to the general tone and timbre of the conversation, and
when he heard that shift that indicates ‘wrapping up,’ he began to move
toward the main cavern so he was arriving just as the call had ended.

“Not much you’d call news,” Bruce said, removing his
cowl. “Each city has set up an embassy and sent an ambassador to the
other. Arthur seems to view it as a great milestone for Sub Diego, but it’s
irrelevant in terms of what Wayne Tech is doing down there. Now… what’s on
your mind, Alfred?”

Alfred glanced at Workstation 3 and then up at Bruce.
He really wished he’d had time to think this through and make a
conversational plan of attack. The only idea he had to introduce the
subject seemed quite artless:

“I’ve been thinking of a night that I found you here,
sir. It was an hour when Batman is usually patrolling, so I was quite
surprised. I had expected to collect your clothes from the costume vault,
as usual, and leave the kimono for you to change into when you returned.
Instead, I found your clothes weren’t there. You hadn’t gone out. And you
were watching two videos, right here.” He pointed. “The left screen had
surveillance footage of Catwoman breaking into the Gotham Museum. And the
center showed the feed from the morning room only a few days prior: Miss
Selina, sitting at the desk, sipping coffee.”

“I remember,” Bruce said quietly.

“Looking very ‘mistress of the manor,’ if I might so
phrase it, sir.”

“I remember,” Bruce repeated.

He remembered the reason he hadn’t gone out that night,
too. He was so agitated, he’d worked out until he reached muscle failure.
He wasn’t capable of swinging on a batline, and he wouldn’t be for another
twelve hours. That reminder of his physical limitations—of his
mortality—gave weight and substance to an idea he had not been able to put
into words, an idea that had been fluttering around at the corners of his
consciousness, vaguely unnerving him from the shadows.

Maybe for me marriage will always mean ‘dead in an
alley.’

He had been sickened and shocked by it, by the idea
itself but even more by the savagery of the words he heard himself using to
express it. A savagery that had a name.

“Would it surprise you if I said I’ve been thinking
about it too?” he asked.

“No, Master Bruce, it wouldn’t. The way you’ve been
acting with Miss Selina these past few days, I would have been astonished if
you claimed that you hadn’t.”

Bruce felt his hand tighten reflexively into a fist,
and to combat it, he crossed his arms and brought the hand to his mouth
where two fingers extended thoughtfully to settle against his lip. He
wasn’t sure he wanted to talk about this, with anyone, but The Savagery had
a name. The Savagery was a part of him. And if The Savagery had chosen
those words in order to shock and horrify, to beat and hammer the
unacceptable thought into unexistence, if it… if ‘Batman’ was the one thing
keeping him from taking that step with Selina, then maybe it wasn’t such a
bad idea to let someone else into the conversation. Particularly since
Alfred was pushing his way in whether Bruce invited him or not.

“It was that comedy of errors we went through with the
Pelacci/Marcuso wedding,” he said finally. “The Rogues thinking it was
Selina and I getting married, Poison Ivy coming to me with a warning. It
looked so much like an orchestrated attack. Batman’s deadliest enemies
wouldn’t just spontaneously take an interest in Bruce Wayne’s private life.
It had to be a deliberate, orchestrated event, a diversion of some kind. So
I went to check on the enemies who know my identity. I went to see Ra’s—”

He tilted his head towards the viewscreen where he’d
been talking to Aquaman a moment before, and Alfred nodded, knowing that
Ra’s al Ghul was currently in a prison cell in Atlantis.

Bruce’s scowl deepened, and even though he was
unmasked, a dark shadow seemed to settle over his features. He said nothing
for a long minute, and Alfred supposed Bruce was reliving the conversation.
When he thought the silence had gone on long enough, he started to speak,
but before he could actually form the words “What did he say, sir?” Bruce
answered the unspoken question.

“He didn’t say anything. He has no contact with the
surface, no news from the outside world. He didn’t know a damn thing.”

“Then…?”

“It was just the act of going to see him. Do you
remember when Ra’s kidnapped Selina? We hadn’t been together long, and I
was still coming to terms with having her in my life, having a little…
normalcy… happiness… We’d gone to the opera. I don’t really care for
Aida, and my mind wandered a lot. I remember thinking of the night
things started to change with Catwoman. I let myself smile at her, and… and
the gaping void of nothingness didn’t rise up like a serpent and swallow me
whole.” He said the last with a wry smirk to emphasize the absurd melodrama
of the words. The smirk almost looked like a masculine echo of Selina’s
playful grin—until it disappeared into Batman’s gravest scowl, and Bruce’s
eyes turned dark and menacing. “Thirteen days and ten hours later, I was
flying to Mongolia, knowing that Ra’s had her, that she could be dead
already. That I had allowed myself a happiness I didn’t deserve and the
cosmos was rising like a serpent to swa—”

“A happiness you didn’t deserve, sir?”

“No one ever said feelings are logical, Alfred. If
they were, Batman and Catwoman never would have… That’s how I felt.”

“I see, sir. And then?”

“And then, nothing. Ra’s only took Selina to force a
meeting. As usual, he was smaller than I gave him credit for. Life went
on. Until one night, in this cave, I said something vile. I said that I
couldn’t marry her. I said maybe to me, marriage would always mean…” He
stopped, unwilling to repeat the phrase. Then he moistened his lips and
continued. “And then going to Atlantis—going to see Ra’s again
because of Selina, this notion of our getting married so much at the heart
of the matter and going to see that ridiculous hairdo again, I just… I, I
realized the whole ‘marriage equals death,’ the fear of losing her
being tied up with… it didn’t come from my parents… It came from Ra’s. It
wasn’t born in Crime Alley, Alfred, it was born on that fucking flight to
Mongolia. And I cannot—I will not—allow Ra’s al Ghul to have that kind
of impact on my life. It’s not going to happen.”

Alfred’s reply was cut off by a chirp on the panel in
front of him, indicating that Bruce Wayne’s cell phone was receiving a
call. Rather than sprinting to the costume vault to retrieve the phone from
his jacket, Bruce merely punched a few keys to receive the call over the
cave system. A tiny phonesize icon of Selina appeared, wildly distorted on
the large monitor in front of him and the larger one that loomed over the
cave.

“Hey, Kitten,” Bruce answered, a foppish lightness in
his tone that belied the seriousness of the previous conversation, and
Alfred performed a silent backstep to reduce his perceived presence without
actually leaving. “No, I don't,” Bruce went on. “No, I— There was a
development at the R&D camp—not an emergency, just a breakthr—No, a real
one… I had no idea Lucius was going to speak to you… I didn’t
think the project was that far along—I was going to tell you myself
when we were ready for you, but I thought it would be a few weeks
ye—Selina—Selina—I… agree… I agree… Yes, he is… Yes… Well, that’s a
matter of opinion, I—Mhm… Mhm… Alright, well, do you want to bring the
Porsche home or stay in town and we’ll rendezvous tonight? … Dick and
Barbara’s? … Okay sure. Yes, I’ll tell him.”

Alfred guessed he was to be the recipient of the final
message from Miss Selina by the way Bruce looked his way on the final ‘I’ll
tell him.’ In a rare lapse, Alfred had failed to be looking blankly at a
random stalactite when Bruce glanced his way, and in fact, the world’s
greatest detective had noted all the signs that his butler was
following the conversation with rapt interest. He acknowledged it with a
playfully disapproving scowl.

“You’ve probably guessed this much: Selina won’t be
coming home for dinner. She’s staying in town, something about a voicemail
from Barbara. She’ll eat with them, prowl from there and bring the Porsche
home after.”

“I see, sir,” Alfred said without a hint of subtext.

Another man would have left it at that, but Bruce
wasn’t fooled.

“Something you wish to add?” he said with the slightest
hint of Bat-gravel.

“On which subject, sir? The ease with which this minor
logistical problem with the car has been resolved, or your prior observation
that you cannot allow the influence of Ra’s al Ghul to prevent your coming
to a comfortable domestic arrangement with Miss Selina?”

“That will be all, Alfred,” Bruce said curtly.

The Elemental Fete was to be a revolution on the Gotham
social scene. It began with Frank Endicott’s perfectly valid observation
that in Gotham City, people expect something exceptional when the Wayne name
is involved. Bunny Wigglesworth agreed. The Wayne Foundation simply had
to do better than the run of the mill black tie benefits that everyone else
did. Mrs. Ashton-Larraby, eager to redeem herself after the disastrous
“Gotham Post” party, had come up with the novel idea of an Elements Ball,
taking all four ballrooms at the Robinson Plaza and decking each out in its
own theme to represent water, earth, air and fire. Mrs. Layne half-listened
to the Event Committee’s excited brainstorming on the subject while she
mentally began sorting through her closet, then the Bergdorf’s windows of
the past few months, and finally the Monique Lhuillier runway and that
strapless chiffon which would be just perfect for her since she lost the
weight from the twins but still had the benefits of an ample bosom to show
off—if she went with the red, of course. Red for fire. There was a
blue Oscar de la Renta she had her eye on that would be just perfect for
water. However would she choose? It’s not like the ideal ballgown body she
had now was going to last. Perhaps she should decide if she wanted to wear
the rubies or the sapphires first, and let that determine which dress… “Oh
my!” she gasped as the idea presented itself whole and fully formed. Not
four ballrooms but four balls. On four consecutive nights: A Fire
Ball, a Water Ball, an Earth Ball and an Air Ball. Four ballrooms on one
ticket helped no one but the hotel. But four events gave everyone four
chances to dress up. It would mean four times the ticket sales, four
auctions and it would let them spotlight a different area of
Foundation programs on each night.

It was the last consideration that sold Bruce on the
idea. He normally rejected the Event Committee’s first blue-sky proposals
out of habit, but this year he was still seething from Gregorian Falstaff’s
remarks at the Empire Club. The idea that the Foundation might be perceived
as not doing as much as it claimed for Gotham made his blood boil. The idea
of four separate events to each benefit and showcase a different type of
outreach, that would be a very effective and very public way to demonstrate
how diverse and extensive the Foundation’s projects were. To attempt it on
four consecutive nights was utterly insane, but one a week would keep
the Foundation front and center, raising awareness of their philanthropic
efforts for an entire month. So there. (Grunt)

The first event was to have been the Air Ball to
benefit Art & Cultural Organizations, but Selina put a stop to that when she
spotted the proposal on his desk. She’d come up to the office for their
regular lunch date, and Bruce told her to wait while he checked on something
with Lucius. When he walked back in the door, he saw she was standing over
his desk with the proposal in her hand, reading it with the condescending
smile that followed some rooftop zinger (“Why Batman, how hard do you want
it to get?”) when he was unable to answer in kind.

“Something in there you don’t approve of?” he asked, a
hint of Bat-gravel creeping into his voice without his realizing.

“It’s just cute. Frank Endicott. Lucius. You.
You’re all such men sometimes. I don’t mean that in the judgmental
Ivy way. I mean that you just… don’t get it sometimes. You don’t know how
to look at certain things: what means what, what’s significant and what
ultimately doesn’t matter. And so you get it wrong.”

“Explain.”

“Okay, I can see the wheels turning here. A string of
gala fundraisers, and it’s a progression. Air is your first theme and fire
is last. That’s because air is light and wimpy but fire is powerful and
destructive, right?”

“It’s last because it’s the most colorful and dramatic,
yes,” Bruce admitted.

“But see, fire is red. A lot of the guests will be
wearing rubies. It’s a flashy gem, bumps into garish when there’s too many
of them. So a lot of the time, you don’t want to wear the spectacular ruby
necklace, especially to the old money foundation stuff like a Wayne
fundraiser; it looks nouveau. But a Fire Ball, that’s the one event
where you can absolutely get those rubies out of the vault and wear them to
a Wayne affair without giving it a second thought. Water is sapphire and
maybe some blue topaz, aquamarine and even turquoise. Less valuable pieces,
farther down the food chain, but that doesn’t matter. It’s a water ball;
you want the blue. Earth could go in a lot of different directions, but
Air, air is clear. My darlin’, air is when the diamonds come out, in
this series of balls where they’re mostly wearing other things. Air will be
the night the diamonds come out. Air is the night they’re feeling the
richest and most elegant—and have the most to live up to. The silent
auction will do twice as well that night as at any of the other events, and
if it’s also the last ball of the four, if it’s your big finale, it will
probably do better than the other three combined.”

Bruce grunted. Then he asked if there was a reason
none of the women on the sub-committee shared these insights, and the
playful cat-smile softened into a very different one.

“Because they don’t know what you’re up to,” she said
with a purr of forbidden knowledge in her voice that sent a sizzle up his
spine, around his neck, across his shoulder and straight down his chest into
his core. Their eyes met, and the admiration Bruce saw there was not the
tender affection of a lover but the frank appraisal of a worthy foe.
They have no idea what a conniving bastard you are, she seemed to be
saying. But I see your real agenda.

“That being the case, you won’t want to waste the grand
finale of an Air Ball on ‘Arts and Cultural Organizations.’ As it is, your
committee members think this order is random. A for Air, A for Art; not
like it matters. But it matters to you.” She stopped and pointed to the
line reading ‘Health and Human Services’ in such a way that her finger
touched the name Thomas at the top of the letterhead. “You want the medical
projects to get the most money and attention, you take it off the Fire Gala
but leave it right here on Night Four to be the showpiece at the Air Ball…
and even though Falstaff’s logo is red and has a big ‘F’ and he’ll want to
make his big showing at the Fire Ball, we’ll figure out some way to rub his
nose in it.”

“I love you,” Bruce said sincerely, kissing her cheek.

“Say it with sushi, handsome. I’m starving,” she
answered, grabbing her purse.

And that was how it was determined that the first night
of the Thomas and Martha Wayne Memorial Foundation Elemental Fete would be
the Earth Ball, benefiting Education & Youth Programs.

A Foundation fundraiser was never a night of frivolity
for Bruce Wayne. After the receiving line, there were informal chats with
individual board members about all the people they’d just shaken hands with,
duty dances and extended stops at the tables of all the big donors, and
special attention to those who had been friends with his parents—and that
was just at events that were exactly what they seemed and not camouflage for
some bait Batman was dangling in front of the villain du jour.

Tonight at least there were no covert sitreps at the
buffet, no clandestine chats with Dick and Barbara about rogue infiltration
or Tim and Cassie briefing him on the security around a 220-pound gold
coin. That’s not to say the conversation at the pastry table wasn’t trying:

“I don’t believe you didn’t tell me,” Dick was
laughing.

“Stop it,” Bruce hissed.

“A little warning next time, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Dick, I brought you up better than this. Be polite.”

“He can’t hear.”

“Alfred brought you up better. You two have been
laughing like when you were kids.”

“It’s a party, Bruce,” Barbara said, poking at him with
a crab puff on the end of a toothpick. “A little laughter isn’t all that
suspect, and like Dick said, it’s not like he can hear what we’re laughing
about.”

Bruce silenced her with the death glare he used to
direct at Batgirl when she encouraged Robin this way: You’re older, act
it, it said.

“Dick’s right, you know, you could have warned us,” she
demurred. “You’ve talked about this Gregorian Falstaff a couple times now.
You didn’t think to mention he’s a dead ringer for Oswald Cobblepot?”

“I mentioned what was relevant,” Bruce said evenly.
“He’s made a lot of waves since he hit town; he bought three tables for each
ball, so you were sure to be meeting him; he’s been critical of the
Foundation and—”

“And he looks like a younger-redhead-goateed-Oswald,”
Barbara murmured as if it was one long word.

Bruce shook his head and left them, heading towards the
bar where Selina was waiting. He’d sent her on a similar mission to
chastise Tim and Cassie… who were now a picture of youthful decorum as they
headed together towards the dance floor.

“It seems you were more successful than I was,” he
noted, picking up a glass of mineral water the bartender knew to have
waiting for him.

“Benefit of a notorious past like mine, threats are
taken very seriously. ‘Drake generations yet unborn’ have no desire to see
a return of ‘the whip thing,’” she declared, taking the glass from his hand
and placing it back on the bar with a smile. “Dance with me,” she ordered
in a low, insistent tone, like a cornered spy looking for cover to pass on
stolen microfilm.

After a few turns, she got down to business:

“Your sidekick is in need of a little training,
Bruce—no, not that kind. You’ve got a ‘notorious past’ of your own: Playboy
of the Western World. And that boy needs some coaching. Look at what
Cassie is wearing tonight, and he hasn’t even told her how pretty she
looks. ‘Is it Falstaff’s eyes or is it his nose that makes him look so much
like Oswald,’ that’s his ballroom chitchat.”

“I’ll speak to him,” Bruce said, then he glanced a
second time at Tim and Cassie. “What is she wearing? That… that
looks like one of the dresses you bought in Paris.”

“It is. I had it altered for her. It’s a long story.”

“We have time,” Bruce said, pressing tighter into the
small of her back and turning her unexpectedly.

“Yes, we do,” Selina laughed. Then she assumed a
lightly foreboding tone as if beginning a ghost story as she said “It’s
actually kind of creepy. A couple weeks ago, Barbara called me to come over
and see her. Turns out—”

“Excuse me, may I cut in?” a smooth, oddly-accented
voice interrupted. Bruce and Selina paused their dance and parted slightly
to face the speaker, both hiding their disgust in a pair of perfectly
matched party smiles as they turned to regard a younger, redheaded, goateed,
taller and pear-shaped facsimile of Oswald Cobblepot. “Disgraceful of you
to monopolize such a ravishing creature, Wayne. You get to look at her
every day, after all. The rest of us only have these rare opportunities.”

“I apologize for my bad manners,” Bruce said, stepping
aside with that glint in his eye that the deadliest thugs in Gotham
associate with pain.

As Falstaff foxtrotted off with Selina, Bruce saw
Lucius was waiting at the edge of the dance floor, and since Tim and Cassie
were still fully occupied with their dance, Bruce went over to join to him.

“He really does look a little bit like that Penguin
fellow in the ads for that Iceberg Lounge,” Lucius offered, guessing Bruce’s
mood and opting for a light-hearted shot at Falstaff that didn’t actually
criticize a major donor in a meaningful way.

“He’s chest-thumping,” Bruce said dismissively, turning
away from the dance floor and leading Lucius back towards the bar as if
eager to introduce him to someone. “And I’m not going to give him the
satisfaction of watching while he dances with Selina. I’m sure that’s what
he wanted—Richard! You remember Lucius Fox, of course.”

Unfortunately, Richard Flay had been following
Falstaff’s movements through the room and, having witnessed the cut-in, he
was eager to introduce the very subject Bruce wanted to change.

“Blasted fellow, that Falstaff,” he huffed. “Do you
know he bought that Goldscheider Aphrodite I had my heart set on at the
Crispin auction, and then the Edgar Brandt mirror and the fire
screen. All three, can you believe it? To come away from the auction
without a single one of the pieces I had my eye on, well, some years that’s
just how it goes—but to lose them all to the same man! You’d think the
upstart had peeked in my catalogue and identified the very pieces I meant to
have.”

They chatted for a few minutes. Mrs. Ashton-Larraby
joined them, seeing Richard Flay’s indignant manner and guessing the subject
under discussion.

“Horrible man,” she fumed. “So fitting that he looks
so much like that Penguin character, because he is nothing but a gangster.
Both of you, come look at this!”

She marched them to a line of table displays
spotlighting the various educational programs sponsored by the Wayne
Foundation. She pointed with an air of dramatic foreboding, like the herald
in a Greek tragedy. Bruce, Lucius and Richard Flay all looked at the
arrangement of enlarged photographs, the central one depicting the Hudson
University campus: the oldest part, where the only two original buildings
flanked a tree-lined mall leading up to the newer Wayne Library. The low
wooden signs reading Ashton Hall and Flay Hall as well as the stone
attribution plate on the front of the library had been covered in decals
advertising a campus event sponsored by Falstaff Inc. The details of the
event weren’t visible, but the distinctive red hexagon and white F of the
Falstaff logo was instantly recognizable.

“Well, the picture is just to represent Hudson,” Bruce
said, making the best of it. “It’s the scholarships and research grants
from the past year that we’re trumpeting.”

“And the new chemistry chair,” Lucius added. “It’s not
actually about the library. Which, of course, was a very old project.”

“It’s an old campus,” Mrs. Ashton-Larraby said archly.
“Founded in 1754 as King’s College by royal charter…”

Always aware of his surroundings, Bruce noted when the
music stopped, and while Gladys Ashton-Larraby lectured Lucius about George
II, he subconsciously began expecting a hint of Selina’s perfume as she
arrived at his side. It was only when it didn’t happen that he found
himself glancing towards the dance floor… and saw she was leaving the
ballroom with Falstaff. He didn’t spot her again for over an hour, and
since she seemed quite engrossed in her chat with Madison Hargrove, he
decided to let her be. The rest of the night whenever they were together,
there were always other people around, so he didn’t get to speak freely
until the ride home.

“Falstaff must employ some kind of zero-sum principle
when it comes to charm,” he said dryly. “Goes around town being as
obnoxious as possible, offends just about everyone he’s come in contact
with, then turns into an enchanting dance partner.”

“I thought I felt the beady eyes of a crimefighter
watching us,” Selina said with a teasing smile—which produced a hint of a
scowl—which produced a hint of a purr before the tone changed. “Stand down,
Dark Knight. Falstaff’s ‘charm’ gets as far as ‘My dear, you really must
call me Gregor’ and then makes a sharp right turn into referencing stuff
that happened years ago, like it marks him out as some great aficionado of
Gotham history. I mean: you read some old newspapers. What am I supposed
to say to that, ‘Yay, literacy’? Most people use those things to wrap
fish.”

“So, if he didn’t impress you, why did you go off with
him?” Bruce asked.

“To empty his wallet,” Selina smirked.

“Very funny.”

“Been a long time since I had the fun of stealing right
under Batman’s nose. Let’s face it, most of what I’ve done since we got
together was with your blessing. This was—”

“You better be joking.”

“Not completely. See, he spent most of our dance
pumping me for details about the silent auctions. He heard a rumor that
Atlantis donated something for the Water Ball. Said he didn’t want to ‘blow
his lunch money’ on tonight’s offerings if you were ‘following the ways of
tradesmen.’ Holding the good stuff in reserve until you’d unloaded the rest
‘on the gullible who are forever incapable of distinguishing quality from
cost.’”

“Insulting me, the item donor, and the other guests in one
line, that’s impressive,” Bruce noted.

“So I made him pay for it. Took him down to tonight’s
auctions and made him place a big fat bid for every hint I gave him about
what was coming up.”

“That’s it?”

“After he wrote down his bids, a few of his 1s may have
become 4s.”

Catwoman hadn’t planned on prowling after the Wayne
gala, but after Bruce did nothing but chuckle at her ‘prank’ changing
Falstaff’s bids—adding that “Whatshername Gretta” had done the same thing to
him once at an Aids Benefit—Kitty felt the need to assert herself. She was
trying to beat her old record at the Sterling Trust when she noticed the
Bat-Signal. Another night, it might have been fun. She’d go to her
favorite gargoyle near One Police Plaza, watch and wait, and as soon as
Batman was finished, she’d break in on the OraCom and ask about it without
preliminaries. But tonight she really wasn’t in the mood for
*cough*fighting, so she went back to finessing the Sterling locks when her
own OraCom buzzed.

“Catwoman’s House of Pain,” she answered.

There was a pause. Then:

..:: Not all jewel thieves share your verdict on
that movie,::.. came a familiar gravel. ..:: The Beauforts’
townhouse was broken into while they were at the Wayne Ball. I’m going to
the crime scene now, if you want to come have a look.::..

In the years he fought Catwoman, a seldom acknowledged
wish-dream formed that one day they could be something more than
adversaries. The dream took various forms, the most wildly improbable being
the partnership they now enjoyed. Unlike the more personal and intimate
variations, ‘crimefighting’ was never a clearly defined dream. Just a vague
notion of her standing at his side before swinging into battle together, or
perhaps sifting through data in the cave, tackling the finer points of some
baffling mystery with their combined areas of expertise. He never
considered that she’d be bringing the most frustrating aspects of
Catwoman-the-criminal’s behavior into the mission with her. He never
figured on the same blinders and rationalizations that let her blithely
pretend stealing wasn’t wrong. He never figured on feline logic—or feline
stubbornness, digging in like a wildcat and refusing to admit she was
wrong.

Maybe—just maybe—Selina in the car driving into the
city would be more reasonable than Catwoman at the crime scene had been.

“About that—” “No.” he began and she answered.

A half mile later, he tried again.

“They got away with—” “Doesn’t matter.”

And once more turning onto the bridge.

“Even though she was wearing th—” “Still morons.”

“But you said—” “Not the point.”

“But y—” “I stand by it.”

“B—” “Because I’m right.”

“Why can’t you just admit that despite not doing it
your way, they made it work.”

“Because it didn’t work.”

“Okay, this is an aspect of the criminal mind I don’t
understand. Explain it to me, please: They go into the house, nobody is
home, they open the safe, they take out all the jewelry Sophia didn’t wear
to the party, they leave. How is that not making it work?”

“Not only was Sophia Beaufort wearing the to-die-for
necklace, earrings and bracelet you save for a Wayne-worthy occasion, she
got home and went to put them back in the safe not two hours after your
burglar had left. ‘Hey look, honey, we’ve been robbed.’ Your burglar had
Batman standing there making pensive faces over his handiwork less
than ninety minutes after he’d gone. That is not ‘making it work.’ You do
it my way, the Beauforts don’t find out they’ve been hit for hours
yet. The Gotham Times will have the story before you hear about it,
and by the time you get there tonight, the GPD, a couple insurance buffoons
and, knowing Dwight Beaufort, the FBI will have had a pissing contest all
over your crime scene.

“Bruce, unless I want you involved, unless I
want my monster sapphire with a Bat-fun chaser, my plane is touching down in
Zurich right now, while you’re sitting here in your day face driving into
work. I’m ready to pop that thing into my safe deposit box, and you don’t
even know there’s been a crime yet. And that’s why I’m a free kitty when
everybody else that tries something like that in this town is singing the
Blackgate Blues. This moron? He is only running two hours ahead of
you. At a time when the Rogues Gallery is all up the river and Batman is
bored. Yeah, that’s really ‘making it work,’ McCavity. Good luck with
that.”

Bruce grunted.

On the one hand, she was stubbornly refusing to admit
she was wrong. She was rigidly insisting her way was the only way—but it
was hard to find that infuriating when her reason was that she saw the
criminals’ failure as a foregone conclusion. The fact that they had the
gems was irrelevant. The fact that he didn’t know who they were was
irrelevant. They had not delayed Batman’s involvement sufficiently, so now
they were doomed to fail. Not only did Selina—not only did Catwoman—believe
that, she was argumentative about it. She was mad at him for not seeing
it. She was irate, impatient and exasperated, as if he didn’t understand
something as basic as gravity.

She was truly an impossible woman, but today, it was
hard to find that infuriating.

Despite Selina’s confidence, neither the police nor
Batman had any suspects on the Beaufort robbery by the night of the Fire
Ball. While the Times had mentioned the incident in its police blotter, a
lone burglary without any theme criminal overtones was not particularly
newsworthy. Gotham, as a whole, hadn’t noticed, but those who knew the
Beauforts personally were aware. It was discussed lightly in the first hour
of the ball; Sophia Beaufort usually brought it up herself. It was
something interesting to talk about, it made her the center of a drama, and
of course, everything was insured. In fact, it was the quick payout that
allowed her to buy the magnificent fire opal she wore tonight.

Gregorian Falstaff took a particular interest in the
gem, praising its color. He was a great connoisseur of reds, he said,
having made of a study of it in order to select the perfect shade for his
logo. You didn’t want something that looked orange in a certain light, or
that would bleach into an insipid pink. Since Falstaff Inc. was a sponsor
of the event, his logo was included on the sign just outside the ballroom
entrance. He escorted Sophia there to see what he meant, and compare the
color to that of her opal, and the photographer stationed there was quick to
snap their picture: Gregorian Falstaff, the Falstaff logo, the sign reading
Fire Ball, and his arm stretched out to Mrs. Beaufort to conveniently block
the words “Thomas and Martha Wayne Foundation” above. Sophia, oblivious to
the photo being staged, naturally complimented Falstaff’s generosity as a
sponsor and asked what aspects of the event his company had paid for.

A few minutes later, Bruce stalked through the ballroom
with the slow, quietly menacing gait of a hungry lion. He spotted Selina
chatting with Ted Layne and Bunny Wigglesworth, touched her elbow without
acknowledging them, and when she turned, he graveled “Dance with me” in the
same this-is-not-a-request tone she had used the week before.

After sixteen bars of punctilious Miss Townsend’s
Dancing School turns around the dance floor in absolute silence, he pulled
her in much closer and whispered “I may need you to slip out of here, get
into costume and meet me on the roof for a few.”

“Got a lead on our cat burglar?” she asked.

“No. But if I don’t get to take a few swings at
someone who can block, it’s entirely possible I’m going to put my fist right
through Falstaff’s skull.”

Selina pulled back just far enough to look into his
eyes, then settled back into the dancing embrace and whispered “You’re
serious. Bruce, get a hold of yourself. Whatever he’s done now, he’s
baiting you, and it’s not supposed to be this easy. Much uglier men
than Gregorian Falstaff have tried and failed.”

“I know, but it keeps getting worse. ‘Whatever he’s
done now?’ Do you want to know?”

“Probably not, unless you want to risk both of us going
after him.”

Another sixteen bars of silent and assiduous dancing
followed, and Bruce decided to tell her anyway. Sophia Beaufort had just
come up to him. They had dated for a brief time before her marriage, and
she’d enjoyed the benefits of the fop’s extravagance as much as any of the
bimbos. Maybe that’s why she was so outraged on his behalf. Apparently
Falstaff Inc. was ‘happy to do their bit’ paying for all the printing and
promotional costs of tonight’s gala, because you couldn’t expect a
foppish dilettante to grasp that all those press kits sent out—‘Look
what we’re doing; aren’t we grand!’—cost money.

He had stood right in front of a photographer from the
Daily News, turned to the display table with a ‘let’s see what we have here
among the beneficiaries’ routine and picked out the Gotham Dance Ensemble.
The Foundation had sponsored a guest artist for two productions and provided
salary for a director’s assistant for one season. Falstaff had pointed his
chubby finger at the director’s assistant and said that was the cost of the
postage right there. The postage Wayne spent sending out press kits
for this shindig tonight, that would have eaten up that girl’s salary if
Falstaff hadn’t stepped in.

“That’s why events like this have corporate sponsors,”
Bruce said through clenched teeth. “It’s all underwritten, discounted and
donated so the funds raised go to the beneficiary organizations. Everybody
knows that, that’s why you’ve got a dozen logos behind you on the red
carpet. And I don’t even take up space crediting Wayne Enterprises or Wayne
Tech on that stuff, because his name is already all over—their name—names,
my par—the parent company is all…”

He drifted into silence, and Selina didn’t speak.

“Thank you for not saying it,” he murmured.

It was one thing to allow himself to be seen as a
foppish playboy, but he had always, always kept those antics far from
the Foundation for this very reason. Yet the thought haunted him: had he
done enough? Was this somehow his fault? The good works done in his
parents’ name, the good works that were his parents’ legacy, for them
to be sullied that way. It made him ill just thinking about it. The Thomas and Martha Wayne Foundation. He had done all a man could to make
their names mean something good and positive and… and he failed them. This
idea was out there now. For anyone to stumble across and maybe believe. He
had failed them. And he had a responsibility to make it right.

“Hey,” Selina whispered, nudging the tight embrace of
their dance open a little and pressing gently against his lead to make him
turn to the right. “Looks like Tim got the message.”

On the edge of the dance floor, Cassie Cain stood with Tim Drake.
Her hair was up, parted in the center, with a single tendril hanging loose
in the front, framing her face on each side. The slightest hint of
light gray eye shadow, the slightest hint of pale peach lipstick...
She would have looked as young and pretty as she had ever been—except that
whatever Tim just said had produced a shy, blushing smile that catapulted
‘pretty’ to breathtaking.

“I guess he did,” Bruce admitted. He watched for
minute, the pair of them looking so young and awkward and innocent—the shy
smile had erupted into an embarrassed laugh—which in turn produced a dazzled
blushing smile from Tim—it was hard to reconcile it with their nighttime
personas. Then detective’s instinct engaged and Batman remembered an open
question that had not been answered.

“You never told me why Cassie was wearing your dress
last week at the Earth Ball.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Selina breathed. She was glad for
the change of subject. The Falstaff storm had passed, for now, and Bruce
seemed his old self again. But the new topic wasn’t one she relished going
into.

“You said it had something to do with Barbara,” Bruce
prompted. “The day I’d flown out to the R&D campus, you went to see her.”

“Yeah, there was kind of a weird thing going on with
people poking around for information about me. Some of it pretty close to
home, literally in one case, like the pensione where I lived in
Florence that one summer. And the same IP that was looking around that
street on Google Earth then started searching near this spot outside Cahors
where I used to go with Francois, Mas-de-Poitard. Which will get them
nowhere, by the way. Google, maps, sign posts—just try to finding the turn
to Mas-de-Poitard without a native driving, you won’t do it.”

Bruce’s lip twitched, which Selina attributed to the
new song the band was playing, not the creepy cyber-stalking of her past in
Europe.

“It seems like they were poking at everything from
Junior High up through next Friday. Again, I’m being quite literal.
Barbara says they were looking through the collections from the runways I
attended at last year’s Fashion Week and the couture houses I went to when
we were in Paris, and judging by the pages they spent the most time on and
the pictures they downloaded, they had correctly ID’d the Elle Saab you saw
Cassie wearing last week and the Valentino I was going to wear tonight.”

“I see,” Bruce smiled. “So you changed your plans.
Gave the one dress to Cassie and tonight’s Valentino—?”

“Why do you think Dick and Barbara were late. Red on a
redhead, I’m surprised she got him out of the house at all.”

Bruce smiled again, which Selina enjoyed for a minute.
He had such a handsome smile, and the genuine ones were a rarity—which is
what made this one so peculiar.

“I don’t get it, you’re the biggest control freak
ever. Why aren’t you having seizures about this?”

“Because I’ve been expecting it. I’m actually
surprised it took so long to happen.”